---
id: fallback-handoff
sidebar_label: Fallback and Human Handoff
title: Fallback and Human Handoff
abstract: This is a guide on how to handle various failures of your assistant.
---
import useBaseUrl from '@docusaurus/useBaseUrl';

Even if you design your bot perfectly, users will inevitably say things to your
assistant that you did not anticipate. In these cases, your assistant will fail,
and it's important you ensure it does so gracefully.

## Handling Out-of-scope Messages

To avoid user frustration, you can handle questions you know your users may ask,
but for which you haven't implemented a user goal yet.


### 1. Creating an Out-of-scope Intent

You will need to define an `out_of_scope` intent in your NLU training data and add any known
out-of-scope requests as training examples, for example:

```yaml-rasa title="nlu.yml"
nlu:
- intent: out_of_scope
  examples: |
    - I want to order food
    - What is 2 + 2?
    - Who's the US President?
```

As with every intent, you should source the majority of your examples
[from real conversations](conversation-driven-development.mdx "Learning from real conversations via conversation-driven development").


### 2. Defining the response message

You'll need to define an out-of-scope response in the domain file.
Using the utterance `utter_out_of_scope` as the default response, that would look like:

```yaml-rasa title="domain.yml"
responses:
  utter_out_of_scope:
  - text: Sorry, I can't handle that request.
```

### 3. Creating an Out-of-Scope Rule

Finally, you will need to write a rule for what should happen for in out-of-scope request:

```yaml-rasa title="rules.yml"
rules:
- rule: out-of-scope
  steps:
  - intent: out_of_scope
  - action: utter_out_of_scope
```

### Handling Specific Out-of-scope Messages

If you observe your users asking for certain things that you'll
want to turn into a user goal in future, you can handle these as separate intents, to let
the user know you've understood their message, but don't have a solution quite yet. For example,
if the user asks “I want to apply for a job at Rasa”, we can then reply with
“I understand you're looking for a job, but I'm afraid I can't handle that skill yet.”

Similar to the `out_of_scope` intent example, you'll need to create a new intent with
training examples, define the response message, and create a rule.


## Fallbacks

Although Rasa will generalize to unseen messages, some
messages might receive a low classification confidence. Using Fallbacks will
help ensure that these low confidence messages are handled gracefully, giving your
assistant the option to either respond with a default message or attempt to disambiguate
the user input.


### NLU Fallback

To handle incoming messages with low NLU confidence, use the
[FallbackClassifier](./components.mdx#fallbackclassifier).
Using this configuration, the intent `nlu_fallback` will be predicted when all other intent
predictions fall below the configured confidence threshold. You can then write a rule
for what the bot should do when `nlu_fallback` is predicted.

#### 1. Updating the configuration

To use the FallbackClassifier, add it to your NLU pipeline:

```yaml-rasa title="config.yml"
pipeline:
# other components
- name: FallbackClassifier
  threshold: 0.7
```

#### 2. Defining the response message

Define the message the bot should send when a message is classified with low confidence
by adding a response:

```yaml-rasa title="domain.yml"
responses:
  utter_please_rephrase:
  - text: I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that. Could you rephrase?
```

#### 3. Creating an NLU fallback rule

The following
[Rule](./rules.mdx) will ask the user to rephrase when they send a message that is
classified with low confidence:

```yaml-rasa title="rules.yml"
rules:
- rule: Ask the user to rephrase whenever they send a message with low NLU confidence
  steps:
  - intent: nlu_fallback
  - action: utter_please_rephrase
```


### Handling Low Action Confidence

As users might send unexpected messages,
it is possible that their behavior will lead them down unknown conversation paths.
Rasa's machine learning policies such as the [TED Policy](./policies.mdx#ted-policy)
are optimized to handle these unknown paths.

To handle cases when the machine learning policies can't predict the
next action with high confidence, you can configure the
[Rule Policy](./policies.mdx#rule-policy) to predict a
default action if no [Policy](./policies.mdx) has a next action prediction with
confidence above a configurable threshold.

You can configure the action that is run in case low of action confidence as well as
the corresponding confidence threshold using the following steps:


#### 1. Updating the configuration

You will need to add the RulePolicy to your policies in config.yml.
By default, the rule policy comes with the settings below:

```yaml-rasa title="config.yml"
policies:
- name: RulePolicy
  # Confidence threshold for the `core_fallback_action_name` to apply.
  # The action will apply if no other action was predicted with
  # a confidence >= core_fallback_threshold
  core_fallback_threshold: 0.4
  core_fallback_action_name: "action_default_fallback"
  enable_fallback_prediction: True
```



#### 2. Defining the default response message

To define what your bot will say when action confidence is below the threshold,
define a response `utter_default`:

```yaml-rasa title="domain.yml"
responses:
  utter_default:
  - text: Sorry I didn't get that. Can you rephrase?
```

When an action confidence is below the threshold, Rasa will run the action
`action_default_fallback`. This will send the response `utter_default` and revert back to the
state of the conversation before the user message that caused the
fallback, so it will not influence the prediction of future actions.


#### 3. Customizing the default action (optional)

`action_default_fallback` is a default action in Rasa Open Source that sends the
`utter_default` response to the user. You can create your own custom action to use as a
fallback (see [Custom Actions](./actions.mdx#custom-actions) for more info on custom actions).
The following snippet is an implementation of a custom action which does the same as
`action_default_fallback` but dispatches a different template
`utter_fallback_template`:

```python title="actions.py"
from typing import Any, Text, Dict, List

from rasa_sdk import Action, Tracker
from rasa_sdk.events import UserUtteranceReverted
from rasa_sdk.executor import CollectingDispatcher

class ActionDefaultFallback(Action):
    """Executes the fallback action and goes back to the previous state
    of the dialogue"""

    def name(self) -> Text:
        return ACTION_DEFAULT_FALLBACK_NAME

    async def run(
        self,
        dispatcher: CollectingDispatcher,
        tracker: Tracker,
        domain: Dict[Text, Any],
    ) -> List[Dict[Text, Any]]:
        dispatcher.utter_message(template="my_custom_fallback_template")

        # Revert user message which led to fallback.
        return [UserUtteranceReverted()]
```



### Two-Stage Fallback

To give the bot a chance to figure out what the user wants, you will usually want it to attempt to disambiguate the user's message by asking
clarifying questions. The Two-Stage Fallback is made to handle low NLU confidence in multiple stages
using the following sequence:

1. A user message is classified with low confidence
    - The user is asked to confirm the intent
2. The user confirms or denies the intent
    - If they confirm, the conversation continues as if the intent was classified
      with high confidence from the beginning. No further fallback steps are taken.
    - If they deny, the user is asked to rephrase their message.
3. The user rephrases their intent
    - If the message is classified with high confidence, the conversation
      continues as if the user had this intent from the beginning.
    - If the rephrased user message still has low confidence, the user
      is asked to confirm the intent.
4. The user confirms or denies the rephrased intent
    - If they confirm, the conversation continues as if the user had this intent from the beginning.
    - If they deny, an ultimate fallback action is triggered (e.g. a handoff to a human).

The Two-Stage-Fallback can be enabled using the following steps:


#### 1. Updating the configuration

Add FallbackClassifier to your pipeline and the [RulePolicy](./policies.mdx#rule-policy)
to your policy configuration:

```yaml title="config.yml"
pipeline:
# other components
- name: FallbackClassifier
  threshold: 0.7

policies:
# other policies
- RulePolicy
```


#### 2. Defining the fallback responses

To define how your bot asks the user to rephrase their message,
define  the response `utter_ask_rephrase`:

```yaml-rasa title="domain.yml"
responses:
  utter_ask_rephrase:
  - text: I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that. Could you rephrase?
```

Rasa provides default implementations for asking which intent the user
meant and for asking the user to rephrase. To customize the behavior of these actions,
see the documentation on [default actions](default-actions.mdx).

#### 3. Defining a Two-Stage Fallback rule

Add the following [Rule](./rules.mdx) to your training data. This rule will make sure
that the Two-Stage-Fallback will be activated whenever a message is received with
low classification confidence:

```yaml-rasa title="rules.yml"
rules:
- rule: Implementation of the Two-Stage-Fallback
  steps:
  - intent: nlu_fallback
  - action: action_two_stage_fallback
  - active_loop: action_two_stage_fallback
```


## Human Handoff

As part of your fallback action, you may want the bot to hand over to a human agent
e.g. as the final action in Two-Stage-Fallback, or when the user explicitly asks
for a human. A straightforward way to achieve human handoff is to configure your
[messaging or voice channel](messaging-and-voice-channels.mdx) to switch
which host it listens to based on a specific bot or user message.

For example, as the final action of Two-Stage-Fallback, the bot could ask the user,
"Would you like to be transferred to a human assistant?" and if they say yes, the
bot sends a message with a specific payload like
e.g. "handoff_to_human" to the channel. When the channel sees this message, it stops listening
to the Rasa server, and sends a message to the human channel with the transcript
of the chat conversation up to that point.

The implementation for handing off to a human from the front end will depend on which
channel you're using. You can
see an example implementation using an adaption of the [chatroom](https://github.com/scalableminds/chatroom) channel
in the [Financial Demo](https://github.com/RasaHQ/financial-demo) and
[Helpdesk-Assistant](https://github.com/RasaHQ/helpdesk-assistant)
starterpacks.



## Summary

To let your assistant gracefully handle failures, you should handle known
out-of-scope messages and add a form of fallback behavior. If you want to add human
handoff, you can add it in addition or as a final step in your fallback
set up.
Here's a summary of changes you need to make for each method:

For out-of-scope intents:
  - [ ] Add training examples for each out-of-scope intent to your NLU data
  - [ ] Define the out-of-scope response or action
  - [ ] Define rules for each out-of-scope intent
  - [ ] Add the RulePolicy to config.yml

For single stage NLU fallback:
  - [ ] Add FallbackClassifier to your pipeline in config.yml
  - [ ] Define the fallback response or action
  - [ ] Define a rule for the `nlu_fallback` intent
  - [ ] Add the RulePolicy to config.yml

For handling low core confidence:
  - [ ] Configure the RulePolicy for core fallback in config.yml
  - [ ] Optionally customize the fallback action you configure
  - [ ] Define an `utter_default` response

For Two-Stage Fallback:
  - [ ] Add FallbackClassifier to your pipeline in `config.yml`
  - [ ] Define a rule for the `nlu_fallback` intent that triggers the `action_two_stage_fallback` action
  - [ ] Define an out-of-scope intent in your domain
  - [ ] Add RulePolicy to config.yml

For handing off to a human:
  - [ ] Configure your front end to switch hosts
  - [ ] Write a custom action (which could be your fallback action) to send the handoff payload
  - [ ] Add a rule for triggering handoff (if not part of fallback)
  - [ ] Add RulePolicy to config.yml
